I know some of my desserts can be elaborate, but this one is remarkably easy - really, it is. I took a shortcut and used store-bought ice cream and mixed in my take on the cookie dough recipe in the book. Of course, you could make your own ice cream, but sometimes there's not enough room in the freezer for the bowl of your ice cream maker so you have to buy a pint of Haagen-Dazs. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

The cookie dough - which is egg-free, thereby making it totally safe to eat raw (even though I think we are all guilty of eating raw cookie dough that's made with eggs) - is infused with a dose of fresh cardamom. Instead of chocolate chips, I used chunks of caramelized white chocolate chunks, which I decided to use instead of straight up white chocolate chips because I find the latter to be a little too sweet and not terribly interesting on their own. Besides, they go much better with cardamom and the flavor of the ice cream, which is, unsurprisingly, mango.

I did make a few changes to the original recipe in the book: in addition to adding cardamom and swapping out regular chocolate chips for caramelized white chocolate chunks, I reduced the sugar by 1/3, even after which I found the cookie dough to be quite sweet.

I couldn't find mango ice cream on short notice, so I mixed some mango puree (which I seem to always have on hand) into vanilla ice cream - either way works.

The combination of mango ice cream with cardamom and caramelized white chocolate chip cookie dough is unexpected, but the deliver is within the confines of a classic. I love this reinvention and hope it shows up at my new favorite ice cream shop, Ample Hills, sometime soon.

To mark the release of The Cookie Dough Lover's Cookbook, I'm giving away a copy. Just leave a comment below with your favorite cookie dough add-in (and make sure to include your email address) by 11:59 pm on Thursday, June 20 and I'll announce a winner next Friday, June 22.

For the cookie doughNote: the following recipe is half of what's in the book, and I only needed half of this for the ice cream.
2 ounces (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 ounces (1/4 cup) caramelized white chocolate chunks (I made 4 ounces of caramelized white chocolate using this method, after which I spread it on a baking sheet, let it cool, then broke it up into small pieces)
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Take the ice cream out of the freezer - you'll need it to sit at room temperature for at least 10 minutes to get it soft enough to mix in the cookie dough.

In a medium bowl, beat the butter and sugar until fully combined, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the milk and vanilla, and beat again until fully combined.

Add the flour, cardamom, and salt, and mix using a large spoon or spatula. Once the dough is nearly combined, stir in the caramelized white chocolate chunks.

Divide the dough in half and wrap one half in plastic wrap - this is going into your fridge for snacking later in the week. Make small balls with the remaining half of the dough (no more than 1/2" round).

By this point, the ice cream should be soft enough to mix in the cookie dough. If you're using vanilla + mango puree, mix the two together in a large bowl until the ice cream is uniform. Add the cookie dough and gently stir to distribute.

Transfer the ice cream to a quart-size plastic container and freeze for a few hours or overnight.